The 101 year-old Swedish secret to picking wild blueberries
September 2020
Autumn is bearing down on us, and summer feels like a long time ago. But it was just yesterday, right? Just last month I was still buying ice creams from Shorty’s, our local ice cream dealer, and basking in the sunshine on the patio. We were still swimming wild in the Dee, and picking wild blueberries in the woods. As much as I love seeing the autumn foliage transform, I’m sorely missing the summer already, and so for good time’s sake, I decided to take a trip down memory lane. Granted those memories are barely eight weeks old.
This story takes place in Ballater, Aberdeenshire. A rather stately, picturesque Royal town in Royal Deeside which we are thrilled to call our home. We arrived just ahead of the pandemic in March 2020, and the impeding lockdown meant we decided to stay. It’s a pretty place, so we did not feel in any way impeded.
The surrounding hillsides are clad with pines, and in the undergrowth we were delighted to find carpets of blueberry. From early spring when we made this discovery, we hoped and prayed to the gods of nature that these bushes would be full of berries come the summer, and we eagerly anticipated baskets brim full of beautiful blueberries.
The gods of nature did not disappoint.
In late June, we picked a few young berries. We were impatient. Nervous. Unsure of how the blueberry season would play out. In summers past, we’d lived in lowlands of Fife, and going even further back, the magical City of Edinburgh. On camping trips to the Cairngorms, we might have encountered wild blueberries - in fact I have memories of cramming handfuls into my face on many a happy occasion. But we had always left again, returned home.
The summers of 2016 and 2019 we spent time in Norway, picking Norwegian berries while we stayed in the cabin on the fjord. Pancakes with fresh berries is an unparalleled treat.
So summer 2020 - we had finally managed to escape the bright city lights, and even the rolling hills and farmfields of the lowlands. We had finally turned wild, living in the wilderness, and honestly, we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t really know when the blueberry season really kicked off, when it would end, and when the hordes of tourist would defy Covid-19 and descend on the hillsides like locusts and strip the bushes bare.
It was an anxious time.
In July, my family came to visit. We eagerly ascended Craigendarroch with them, leading the way, and my toddler niece actually did a fabulous job of helping the berry picking mission.
And no, in case you were wondering, the Swedish secret to picking wild blueberries is not a toddler. They are good, but not that good. And they tend to have a ratio of about 1 berry in the basket for every 10 berries picked. 90%, if not more, get guzzled.
So while we my sister monitored the toddler, I deployed the Tool. The masterpiece that is the Swedish secret to picking berries.
I guess it’s not such a huge secret, because they are widely available on Amazon and other reputable retailers. I say it’s a secret mainly because I didn’t know about these things until well into adulthood. And yet they’ve been around for over a century - perhaps longer! The patent was applied for and granted in 1920 to two Swedes, J Skinder and Jacob Msakoliunas. Geniuses, in my book.
As a lover of tiny details, I love that the patent was filed under the category of agriculture, subsection harvesting and mowing, sub sub section devices for picking apples or like fruit. Now, it’s a bit late to go back and nit pick this - but blueberries are in no way like apples. Other than being a fruit. So let’s not split hairs - all that is important here is that Patent A01D46/247 was granted for “manually operated fruit-picking tools”. I do like a technical term.
And it has endured. The Jonas Swedish Berry Picker. Although clearly it never made it to British shores, because for the love of all things foraging, we never had one as a child. *Note to self to question mother about this.
By sheer luck of nabbing myself a Scandinavian, this is how I found about the berry picker. As it would transpire, while we Brits are unaccustomed to such a device, no Scandinavian would be caught dead in summer without one. (Unconfirmed fact: I just like to imagine this.)
So by enjoying serene extremely wet summers on the West Coast of Norway, where let’s be under no illusion - it rains for 239 days of the year, I got my first try.
And back in Ballater, earlier this summer when the jewel like berries first began to appear, we made the investment in the trusty Swedish berry picker.
As far as reviews go, what can I say? It does what it says on the wooden box. It picks berries. It does very little damage to the structure of the plants that I can see, and is generally an extremely enjoyable way to pick berries. Might it save your back? Perhaps. It does save your fingers from a rather glorious deep purple stain.
Having had the chance to test this a couple of times now, I’m not convinced it’s any faster than your average adult picking blueberries, but it’s certainly much quicker than the average blueberry-munching toddler.
The real value of the Jonas Berry Picker, however, is that you feel like an authentic bona fide forager. There is no better feeling than to wade through the undergrowth wielding a berry picker, to pounce upon a blueberry bush and come up for air with a berry picker full of berries.
That is true satisfaction.
So if you don’t particularly like getting your dainty finger tips dirty, it is a wise choice.
If you don’t like getting your boots muddy though, I suggest you stick to the supermarkets or farmers markets. Ironically, some of the best commercial blueberries in the UK are grown in Fife, where we had effectively moved from.
But give me the hills any day. Give me the woodlands, and the corries and steep mountain glens. Over the coming autumn and winter, the Jonas berry picker will be in hibernation. But we will continue to enjoy the fruits of its labour, of our labour, as we make our way through the rather substantial bounty of homemade blueberry jam.
Delicious.
Haste ye back, summer!